Nuke
This album, quite frankly, is terribly overrated. Even Epica themselves have said that their second album is better (of course, that was right after they finished their second album, so maybe they had bias towards it). For those who were fans of After Forever's first 2 albums, the guitarist is the same guitarist, Mark Jansen. After Forever sacked him, and he started his own band called Sahara Dust, which was going to include Helena of note from Trail of Tears, but she left for a different project and Mark Jansen brought in his girlfriend Simone Simmons. He changed the band's name to Epica in tribute to Kamelot's album of the same name, and from there they went on to record this album. I think the biggest problem with this album is Mark, who seems to be the leader of this band for now, and brings both terrible ideas and brilliant ideas to the band, without his bad ideas getting shot down. We have a thicket of clichés so overgrown you can barely breathe, and right when you think it can't get any lamer, some awesome or beautiful part will come in and restore your faith. Then we have things that shouldn't have gotten off the drawing board, for example the spoken sections. Oh, and it is almost all psuedo-intellectual religion bashing, so if you get sick of that, too bad. There is also a song expressing his frustrations with After Forever called run for a fall, so in case you wanted a break from the religion bashing you can have After Forever bashing, yay! (They are now on good terms again) This album is dwarfed by their next 3 albums, and I would almost say it's for collectors/fans only, but it has enough strong points that one can enjoy it without being a fan, especially if you aren't turned off by melodrama and cliches.